Live Updates: The First 2024 Presidential Debate Between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
Thanks for joining The New Yorker for its live coverage of the first—and likely only—Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. To receive full coverage of the 2024 campaign between now and Election Day, sign up for our daily newsletter.If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump by now, nine years into his
Thanks for joining The New Yorker for its live coverage of the first—and likely only—Presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. To receive full coverage of the 2024 campaign between now and Election Day, sign up for our daily newsletter.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Donald Trump by now, nine years into his career in public life, it’s that his ego invariably gets in the way of what others might consider political good sense. Before the start of his first and likely only debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris, the former President posted a video clip on his social-media feed, along with a quote from an admirer: “Donald Trump is probably the greatest political debater we’ve ever had in American History.” So much for expectations-setting. Read more.
Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris
The most famous childless cat lady in the world has spoken. Minutes after Donald Trump and Kamala Harris left the debate stage, while we were all still processing the news that Trump is a “leader on fertilization” and that Harris apparently owns a gun, Taylor Swift posted to her two hundred and eighty-three million followers on Instagram. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” she wrote. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I’m voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them.”
What was it that finally moved Swift to endorse? Was it Trump’s comments, during the debate, about migrants eating pets? (“They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats.”) Was it the online vitriol that Swift has received, over the past few days, for warmly embracing Brittany Mahomes, a presumed Trump supporter, at the U.S. Open? According to Swift, she felt she needed to speak out after Trump falsely implied that she had endorsed him, posting A.I. generated images of young women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts and a depiction of Swift herself dressed up as Uncle Sam, with the slogan “Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump.” As Swift wrote on Instagram, “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Even though Trump has said positive things about Swift in the past, having described her as “very talented” and “unusually beautiful,” his campaign has already tried to dismiss Swift’s endorsement of Harris, with Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt telling the Times that it’s “more evidence that the Democrat party has become the party of the wealthy elite.” It’s an argument that we’ve heard from Trump before, particularly in the 2016 Presidential election, as celebrities lined up behind Hillary Clinton. In that election, Trump so successfully weaponized his opponent’s celebrity endorsements that Swift decided to stay silent. As she told Vogue, “Would I be an endorsement or would I be a liability?”
Swift has figured out the answer to that question. In 2020, she endorsed the Biden-Harris ticket, and her endorsement of Harris in 2024 comes at a time when Swift has never been more popular, powerful, and ever-present. We’ll all be watching the Kansas City Chiefs game on Sunday.
Agreed. I do wonder if Harris will feel that she did enough to make her case on the economy, probably her weakest issue—when she framed her closing statement around an “opportunity economy,” it stuck out a bit in how little we’d heard of that all along. But, look, she baited Trump into incoherence, she emphasized his radicalism, and she just about avoided being effectively called a flip-flopper. The commentators all said this debate was going to be primarily about Harris, that voters have long ago made up their minds about Trump. Well, she won it.
As far as I can tell, Harris did more of the work she showed up tonight to do. She seemed in control all night, hitting her marks as she went. More than enough against a guy who doubled down on many of the neuroses that he’s turned into his greatest hits. This qualifies as a narrow win for Harris, I think: she certainly didn’t lose any voters and, in places like the Philly and Atlanta suburbs, may have picked one or two up.
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